Pretentious is an easy word to use as a weapon. A very easy word if you were a music critic in 1984, in receipt of Prefab Sprout’s debut album,
Swoon. Here, for heaven’s sake, was a record whose title was explained as ‘Songs Written Out Of Necessity’. The sleeve note was credited to Emma Welles, but it smacks of McAloonism. McAloonacy? One might well ask what was the necessity that drove him to create songs like ‘Green Isaac’, ‘Cue Fanfare’ and ‘Here On The Eerie’. What is Swoon all about? Twenty five years later does it all make any more sense than it did at the time?
On first listening, those of a shallow mindset might well have seen pretention in the then unknown Sprouts’ pop stylings. Fashionable white funk. Literate lyricism. And, in McAloon, a writer and peformer not afraid of taking chances, some of them dancing perilously close to the precipice of pseudo-intellectualism. But, to his credit, McAloon does not miss his footing, high on his self-appointed eerie. He comes damn close at times, but, like a tightrope walker teasing his audience, he never quite tumbles into the abyss.
Swoon’s opener is the esoteric neo-funk of ‘Don’t Sing’, (typical of McAloon’s skewed approach to songwriting in that the title does not appear once in the lyric). This, no less, is a song based on Graham Greene’s novel The Power and the Glory, a conceit that suggests the densely literate references that litter the musical landscape of Steely Dan. As, indeed, does the music itself, as it swerves and dips through chord and mood changes that are both unpredictable and beguiling. Less than four minutes in and Swoon has already nailed its colours to the mast.
But the Graham Greene subtext is, if anything, a red herring, for it is with the second track, Cue Fanfare, that we begin to get to the heart of what Swoon is all about – Paddy McAloon’s fascination with the clichés of romantic love and lyricism. ‘The sweet sweet songs that cloud your eyes – nostalgia supplies’ he sings, in a voice heavy with world-weariness. Throughout the album, McAloon sounds less like a man in his twenties than an embittered forty-something cynic looking back on life’s mistakes. It gets better: ‘Loredo Highstreet buried me… beneath an oak tree.’ Hackneyed phraseology that could have come straight from Hank Williams, if not earlier. McAloon knows his stuff and his ability to weild such authentic phrases alongside a chorus about Bobby Fischer is just one of the many chance he takes here. Musically, the song swoops and dives, flirting with changes of key and tempo, almost daring the listener to make sense of it all. Like the chess grandmaster, McAloon damn near ‘plays us out of town.’
Now he’s softened us up, McAloon is ready to try anything. Like a song that begins with a line that could have come straight from… well, where exactly? John Donne? WB Yeats? ‘Stella Mater, light is fading/ making such a fool of thee…’ The etherial voice of Wendy Smith, who haunts the whole album like a ghostly companion, adds to the unearthly atmosphere before the world-weary McAloon comes down to earth with another killer lyric: ‘This is the time/ I’ve set aside/ from selling old rope/ and telling bad jokes/ and cul-de-sac pride.’ It’s like Frank Sinatra seen through the distorting base of a whisky tumbler. Once again, McAloon returns to Swoon’s ever-present obsession, the uncomfortable cloying clichés of romantic language, as embodied in song: ‘In itself it’s a joy, whether it soothes or annoys, a song starts in the throat.’ And, as if to prove his point out of sheer perversity, in comes the chorus, emerging like a sudden jump into the middle of another track with its unexpected change of mood and tempo and the creepy, inexplicable refrain: ‘And little Green Isaac/ You’re gonna walk backwards through the room.’ Well, of course he is.
From here, Swoon continues to soar, taking ever more daring chances. A bit of cod Shakespeare? Certainly sir, I advise you to try ‘Here on the Eerie’: ‘… the truth well will make you ill.’ Vocally, McAloon pushes his voice to the very limits of its range, delving down to deep bass notes that he can barely pull off. And somehow it works. We’re still only on track four and yet already one feels totally at home in the musical world of Prefab Sprout. The unexpected cadences, the unusual chord voicings, making full use of the tension between bass and guitar parts, the rhythmic dynamics. This is sophisticated stuff and McAloon sounds like he’s been doing it for years. Effortlessly.
But the masterstroke comes in the form of the song that, on the original vinyl, closed the first side. Cruel is a staggering, towering achievement, quite possibly McAloon’s finest song, and in it, he distills everything that’s been bothering him so far during the album’s proceedings. It’s like the conclusion to a perfectly reasoned argument, and in typical bravura style, McAloon nails it right from the start: ‘There is no Chicago urban blues/ more heartfelt than my lament for you.’ There’s a whole novel’s worth of soul searching buried in these densely crafted lyrics. Not to mention an almost painful awareness of what has gone before. ‘My tuppentup friend’ recalls Moon River, or even Porgy and Bess. In the hands of a lesser artist, the jazz stylings on offer here might seem mere shallow posturing. But McAloon, with the gruff, cracked voice of the bluesman he alludes to in the lyric, sounds entirely in command of the situation. The vocal recording, with massive mid-range in the Eq, only adds to the sense of authenticity on offer. It’s here also that we encounter one of the two most beguiling sounds on the whole album – McAloon’s little vocal ‘gulp’ before he essays the line ‘Lordy, what would I do.’ It’s tiny, a nuance, maybe even a mistake, but the fact that it’s been left in is proof of the genius we’re dealing with.
By the time the needle goes down on side two, you’re wondering if Swoon can maintain this level of achievement. Well, the answer is yes and no. The first thing we hear on side two is McAloon's varispeeded deep voice singing a babytalk refrain: ‘Bo…bo bee… bo bee… bo.’ It’s almost laughable. Almost, but not quite. And that’s the point. It’s as if the Sprouts are trying to scare off anyone who still harbours any doubts about this album. This far and no further. But ‘Couldn’t Bear to be Special’ turns out to be one of Swoon’s key moments. McAloon’s delivery swings alarmingly between tenderness and naked aggression. “I couldn’t bear…RIGHT?” This is one of the most in-your-face vocal performances you will ever encounter. And what’s it all in aid of? McAloon is upbraiding his lover for burdening him with unreasonable expectations: ‘Don’t look at me and say/ that I’m the very one/ who makes the cornball things occur.’ Note the use of the word ‘cornball’, too. A knowing nod in the direction of George and Ira? I’d say so. There’s another fascinating piece of audio on offer here, too – a far-off percussive thud suggesting distant cannon fire. This is fast becoming an extraordinary record.
‘I Couldn’t Bear’ is, like ‘Cruel’, an exceedingly hard act to follow, which is probably why McAloon chooses to sequence ‘I Never Play Basketball Now’ at this stage in the proceedings. The song, whilst up there with the best of the Sprouts’ recorded output, can’t quite match what’s gone before, despite some lovely touches like a throwaway guitar figure between the first two lines of the lyric, and is reminiscent of the band’s early singles. Even so, McAloon remains in experimental mood, and the song sounds like an exercise in linearity, as the theme devolves in multiple directions, leaving the listener floundering in unfamiliar waters. And then, miraculously, we’re back at the beginning. What seemed like a random melodic development has, in fact, been meticulously planned. This is the Sprouts' musical modus operandi at work.
‘Ghost Town Blues’, another knowing cliché put to work here as the title, sounds like a novella or short film set to music. Somehow, one imagines 1940s small town America, a tragic heroine and a Jimmy Stewart hero. The listener is forced between the lines to fill in the gaps in McAloon’s glimpsed narrative. Who, exactly is Anne Garland? Does she keep a lonely vigil at the bedside of a comatose lover (‘you can’t call this heartbeat a man’)? Again, the melody continually performs the unexpected, leaping huge intervals, playing games with chord voicings. It simply doesn’t sound like anyone, or anything else. This, truly is the sound of Prefab Sprout, a sound as ungainly in its own way as the band’s name. But somehow, like the randomness of that name, it all works.
‘Elegance’ displays more control and fewer of the bravura effects that Swoon has dazzled us with so far. Even so, there’s still plenty of room for audacity: ‘will you no come assess me’ sings McAloon, sliding incongruously into the argot of Robbie Burns. Again, he looks for comfort in romancticism and finds only empty gestures: ‘because these stardust memories/ fail to please.’ Like Bob Hoskins’ character in ‘Pennies from Heaven’, McAloon wants to believe the old clichés but can’t prevent himself from bursting their romantic bubble.
By the time McAloon counts in ‘Technique’ (a song in four-four time on a count of five – well, of course!), there’s almost a sense of anticipation, a feeling that, having come this far, we can imagine what lies in store. In fact, ‘Technique’ is probably Swoon’s low point. That’s not a very low low, of course, and for many artists, it would be a career high. Yet this tale of infidelity with a woman whose ‘husband works at Jodrell Bank’ doesn’t quite ring true. Even, so there’s still room here for the album’s overarching theme: ‘I loathe the stilted way you make me speak,’ sings McAloon, desperate as ever to find a way to find a way past the clichés of romance.
And for afters? Well, it’s obvious isn’t it? The missing beginning of an earlier song, presented here as the album’s coda, in the form of ‘Green Isaac II’. Though a mere fragment, McAloon’s rich melody contains some gorgeous lyricism. And who, finally is Green Isaac? Why, he’s every naïve fool who ever fell in love.
